Separatists call for 3-day mourning

Separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who has called for a one-day shutdown in Kashmir to mourn and protest against Friday’s killing by security forces of Burhan Muzaffar Wani, the poster boy of militancy in the Valley, said, “The iconic mujahid’s martyrdom will give impetus to the push for azadi.” He also announced three days of mourning in Kashmir and said, “Every household will pay tribute to the Kashmiri bravehearts for three days.” The right-wing all-women Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Faith), meanwhile, called for a three-day strike in Kashmir from Saturday.

Wani, the 22-year-old Internet-savvy Kashmiri militant, was a resident of Dadsara village in south Kashmir’s Tral area who left home in 2010 — days before he was to take the Class 10 examination — to join the region’s front-line indigenous militant outfit Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. He soon rose to become its district commander and figured in the list of most wanted militants.

Wani’s father, Muzaffar Ahmed Wani, is a schoolteacher who had said in a recent interview, “He is on a pious path and we are proud of him.” Khalid, his elder son, also was a militant who was shot dead by security forces in the woods of Tral on April 13, 2015. The security forces had claimed that he was shot down in an “encounter” while trying to meet his brother Burhan.

Officials said Burhan Wani and his associates were killed in a swift joint operation launched by the J&K police’s counter-insurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) from Srinagar and Anantnag and the Army’s 19 Rashtriya Rifles at Bamdoora, a remote village of Kokernag area. One of the two other slain men was identified as Sartaj Ahmed Sheikh, who had surrendered a few years ago but returned to militancy and joined the Hizb after his release from jail in 2014. Since then he had worked closely with Wani, police sources said.

Sources said that as the SOG men, after launching the operation on the basis of intelligence inputs and information gathered through the Internet, zeroed in on a private house at Bamdoora that was being used by Wani and his associates as a makeshift hideout, Sartaj tossed a hand grenade at them but was quickly killed in retaliatory fire.

A fierce firefight ensued between the remaining militants and the SOG men who eventually used explosives and two landmines to blow up the house, resulting in the killing of the two, the sources said. The third slain militant has been identified as Masoom Ahmed Shah.

SOG officials said it was a “swift and clean” operation as the raiding party knew the exact location of the house on the Karkipora-Kokernag road that was being used as a hideout. The house, they said, is owned by one Ghulam Muhammad Sheikh, Sartaj’s maternal uncle. The operation was launched at 4.30 pm and was over by 7 pm, they added.

Burhan Wani would often turn to social media sites, including Facebook, with statements, videos and photographs of the activities of the militant group he headed. His last video surfaced in June this year in which he insisted that Kashmiri militants have no plan or intention to target the Amarnath yatra but would definitely continue to attack local policemen as they are seen by them as “collaborators” in Indian “occupation”.

The assurance not to disrupt the 48-day annual pilgrimage to the Hindu cave-shrine in the Kashmir Himalayas, which commenced on July 2, and the threat to continue to target J&K police personnel came amid a series of deadly attacks on policemen in the Valley. He claimed that the Hizb had no option but to target the policemen as they were supporting “Indian occupation”.

In such displays on the Internet, Wani and his associates would often be seen in combat fatigues and carrying automatic weapons. But in the video released June 6 he was wearing a white T-shirt and sitting in a chair against a white back ground. In that video he also threatened to target the clusters for Kashmiri Pandits and separate residential areas for serving and former soldiers and officers of the Army if and when these are set up in the Valley. ““If Sainik Colony or separate colonies on Israel pattern for Hindus are created in Kashmir, we will target them,” he had said. Wani, however, also said, “Pandits can come here and live in their respective places.” He also cautioned the media, saying it should desist from calling militants “terrorists”. “We are not terrorists. This land is ours. Kashmir is ours. We are not terrorists but it is the Army that are terrorists.”

Meanwhile, key separatist leaders, including Mirwaiz Muhammad Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, have been placed under house arrest to prevent them from relocating to Tral to attend Wani’s funeral or join the “prayers in absentia” to be held in Srinagar and elsewhere in the Valley on Saturday. Mr Geelani’s movements have been curbed for the last few months. The authorities have also decided to impose security restrictions in various parts of Srinagar, and in Anantnag, Pulwama and Tral, from dawn on Saturday to hold back protests and mourning rallies.